Blood and Regret
by paynesgrey
Summary: Peter would like to believe Sylar has changed; however, Claire believes differently. ONESHOT. Post-series. Warning: Character death.


AN: Written for the "different" prompt for the Summer Mini Challenge. Completed one-shot. Post-canon.

* * *

 **Blood and Regret**

Today Peter Petrelli and his partner clean up a messy school bus accident on the highway. Football players, coaches, and cheerleaders are delicately taken from their mangled piles on the streets and filtered into body bags, or if they're lucky, into screaming ambulances back to the hospital where each second is more vital than the next.

When they're done, Hesam gives Peter a somber look, pulls him into an affectionate hug, and Peter leaves for home missing his warmth, wishing for a hundred hugs and less blood on his hands. Children died that day, and more will die tomorrow. It's his job, and though Peter lives with the death, he much prefers his life likes this. _If he can save one life, it's worth it,_ he thinks. But those who do die don't make it any harder for him to sleep at night.

But he sleeps anyway, escaping into his dreams. Peter doesn't know how he does it every day after things like this, but he still sleeps.

* * *

When the morning is dark, Claire calls him in the middle of a nightmare. He's dreaming about her as she's lying on the side of the road broken in her own blood, and next to the bodies of strangers with various faces of friends and family, on the bodies he's cleaned up from the highway that day.

She calls and says she's worried about Emma again. Peter's told her to stop stalking her, but ever since Claire's found out that Sylar and Emma were friends, she's been worried, critical of their relationship, and mostly concerned that Emma will end up dead, so Claire has been keeping an eye on her as much as she can.

Claire will never forgive Sylar, not like Peter has after being trapped with him behind the wall of his mind. Claire will always regard Sylar differently, and she will never believe he's completely good, and he will never escape her critical eye - waiting for that one telling moment where he slips up. She pushes herself into Emma's life, and as Peter's niece, Emma accepts her, but she doesn't know that Claire considers herself Emma's bodyguard, keeping close so she can monitor Sylar's every movement.

Peter, on the other hand, takes each moment with Sylar in stride. In small, hopeful strides.

Sylar has saved the world, and since Nathan's death he's proven himself time and again, and Peter has spent years in a place of nowhere with the man who wants nothing more than to repent and never to die alone. How can he doubt him now? Peter knows things with Sylar aren't so black and white; they never were, but Peter hopes he can put faith in the man regardless.

They've _both_ done bad things. They both have regrets, but Peter is the only one who empathizes with him and understands. Maybe this is the real reason why Peter can believe him.

* * *

After he hangs up the phone with Claire, Peter slips into another dream, prophetic this time as he still holds his mother's power. Trepidation consumes him, and he panics and jumps out of bed, throwing his clothes on and running out his apartment to grab a cab. He tells the driver to hurry down the New York streets he complies and Peter sees the thrill on the driver's face. Peter's phone rings when he gets out of the cab, but he doesn't answer. He knows it's from Claire.

Climbing a familiar stretch of stairs, Peter comes to the open door and stops. He hears crying within Emma's apartment, and he sees Sylar hunched over her, drawing words of "Forgive Me" on the floor in blood. The apartment has the stench of death, so much that Peter's choking on it.

Sylar turns around to meet his eyes. "I'm sorry. I'm so so sorry," he wails. He looks down at Emma, runs a light finger down her cheek and weeps some more. "I thought I could change."

Peter is speechless. The ache in his stomach turns into sharp ball of pain entwined in horror. Before he realizes he's crying and sinking to his knees in shock and despair, he sees Claire emerge from the shadows and stand over Sylar's pitiful form.

"I told you he could never change. Once a monster always a monster," she says to him with morose and vehemence, as if her voice is the same one that's been shouting at Peter in the back of his head for months. Sylar looks up at her, awed, almost like she's an angel of death, and she raises the axe that rests on her shoulder. Her face flashes with pity before she swings.

"No more second chances," Claire says, and Peter closes his eyes.

Sylar _lets_ her swing the axe. (He could have stopped her, escape her revenge, and Peter can't believe that he _doesn't_.) He supposes it's the last _good_ gesture Sylar can really perform, to go out selflessly and never relapse and kill again. After all, he's tried so many times to change, but the desire keeps coming back, reminding Sylar of who he truly is and that he can never really change. And if he doesn't, with Claire's power he will live centuries with a trail of carnage in his wake.

In some future, one that is now moot, Peter remembers Gabriel telling him about the Hunger. It sounded silly at the time, but Peter's had that power, he knows what it can do, and it's one of few powers he never wants back.

He's almost surprised. Claire whispers an apology after Sylar's head tumbles onto the floor next to Emma's, where both faces are painted with red and terrified eyes. He wonders if Claire perhaps wished that Sylar could change too, even though she's never allowed herself to believe it.

After a long second, Peter finally feels blood splatter begin to crust on his face and wonders how long he'll feel its stain.

Nothing will compare to the guilt he'll feel for trusting Sylar.

* * *

Claire and Peter burns Sylar's body. Everyone who Sylar ever wronged is there in attendance: her dad, Angela, Peter, and the others, and it feels like déjà vu. The somber expressions on their faces tell Peter that they're thinking of Nathan right now, that he's the only one missing from their mourning vigil, that they'd rather be mourning him than Sylar right now.

Peter still mourns Sylar anyway, even if he's the only one; at least, he remembers the Sylar he knew and came to see as a friend. He mourns Emma too, and he hates to think that he could have stopped this, that he could have warned her about Sylar's past, and she could have escaped Sylar's eye. It's too late now, though, and Peter resolves to live with the burgeoning guilt and regret that comes his way.

When Claire slips her hand into his, he almost pulls away, angry that Claire finds vengeance for Nathan when he can't. He should have protected Emma instead of Claire, but he didn't, and feeling so inept has never felt so strong. Why isn't he as strong as Claire? How can he trust monsters when she always knows the truth? In this sense, Peter hates Claire for this, but he also cannot lose her; he needs her to be the guiding angel in his life.

Claire pulls him along to the car and his mother is waiting for him. She seems pleased, and Peter empathizes. She knows that this bloodshed is finally over as it is meant to be.

But Peter isn't sure it's over for him, and he knows that he'll blame himself for what Sylar did. The regret that he'll feel will be like so much of the blood stains on his hands, never fading and the freshest red until the day he dies.

END


End file.
